Dwarf Units
Back to Dwarves ---- Dwarf Units Racial Tag The Dwarves have a few hidden traits that come from their racial tag of "Dwarf", which for the most part are beneficial: *Resistant to Poison. (+25%) *Resistant to Disease. (+25%) *-1 combat while raining. ----------''Tier 1''---------- ''Smith - Dwarven Builder'' A sturdy but costly builder unit for the Dwarves. Smiths are very useful in maintaining a good economy as they count as 2 men when placed in a mine. ''Dwarf Runner - Dwarven Scout'' A unit designed only for scouting. Without drunkenness, Dwarf Runners are incapable of prolonged combat and they cannot move very quickly without speed upgrades. However, they are highly resistant to piercing missiles and have a resistance to all elemental, which allows them to be used as reasonably expensive fodder. ''Dwarf Infantry - Basic Dwarven Infantry'' A high cost basic infantry unit for the Dwarves. Dwarf Infantry can take some punishment from both elemental and physical damage types, but are slow and are quite incapable of dealing much damage back. ----------''Tier 2''---------- ''Dwarf Crossbow - Advanced Dwarven Missile Unit'' Dwarf Crossbows are slow and don't have much physical toughness, but they do a massive amount of damage. They are very efficient tower garrisons as each unit offers +20 damage. A tower garrisoned this way is very dangerous, hitting harder than some titans at ranges very few units can match. This alone can keep a player relatively safe even in the late game. ''Ballista - Siege Weapon'' A formidable siege weapon, the Ballista is a spear bolt-throwing missile unit which is capable of firing projectiles through multiple opponents whether they are flying or not. However, the Ballista is slow, takes a long time to produce and costs 4 Army Points to field. ''Eagle - Basic Flier'' The Eagle's specialty is that it can build from both building lists and, by being a flier, you won't even have to worry about the Eagle trapping itself after building too closely to another object. They're pretty bulky and have a high combat stat for a basic flier, so they can certainly hold their own against others and are likely to come at on top. But due to the Dwarves having access to such fast builders, the Eagle should only be used for long distance building, where its speed and ability to fly would allow it to reach such destinations minutes ahead of a Dwarven Smith. ----------''Tier 3''---------- ''Dwarf Berserker - Advanced Dwarven Infantry'' Berserkers are some of the best infantry the dwarves have, and will remain useful even in the later game. Though they're brutally expensive in regards to ore, they cost nothing else, and on top of their already high armor they're resistant to all physical damage. Upgraded, drunk berserkers are extremely hard to beat without elemental damage, and even then they're incredibly tough, so they'll be your frontline along with later soldiers. ----------''Tier 4''---------- ''Catapult - Siege Weapon'' The Catapult is a siege weapon capable of immense power. It costs comparatively little, takes almost no time to produce considering it's a siege unit, and has incredible damage and range. Catapults may not be particularly tough and are vulnerable to air attacks but almost anything on the ground should fear this weapon despite its weakness. The special ability of the Catapult is its splash damage, which equates to throwing Giants at the enemy at an incredibly long range. Combine this with its cheap economical properties and you get a unit which literally dominates the ground metagame. ''Battering Ram - Siege Weapon'' Battering Rams are the most durable of all siege weapons, but not necessarily the most useful. Their speed couldn't be lower and their combat can off set their building razing capabilities due to the combat mismatch against the building, causing them to score a lot of misses. Also, not all towers will hit the Battering Ram against its higher armor rating or / and its special resistance, whereas the likes of the Catapult is equally as effective against all towers. ''Khazrimi Guard - Elite Dwarven Infantry'' Though not as physically durable as some other dwarven units, Khazrimi Guard make up for it with a constant stream of crushing type critical hits and a high elemental resilience. These Stun criticals lower the opponent's combat, which in turn increases the chance for high combat units to perform another critical hit on them. This makes Khazrimi Guard incredibly deadly against certain units. ''Runelord - Dwarven Spellcaster'' The dwarven spellcaster brings mostly ranged firepower to the mix, as their fireballs combined with drunkness for extra accuracy are quite dangerous. Doomstones gives them a way to protect themselves from a direct melee assault, making the first wave trying to take them down suffer quite a bit of damage, if not die outright, and summoning earth elementals lets you access one of the strongest building destroyers the game has. ''Earth Elemental - Summoned Unit'' Slow, tanky and rather huge, these are some of the best building wreckers the game can offer, doing quadruple damage to structures. It's quite difficult to actually get them to a base, but once there they can destroy it with little time. They are summoned by Runelords with 100 mana, but due to the natural building-destructive power of the Runelord's firy attack, Earth Elementals aren't really needed for the immense damage they deal to buildings and thus the mana is better spent on the Doomstones spell, which can actually be cast twice for less mana than the cost of summoning an Earth Elemental. However, Earth Elementals can take quite the beating and can be used to sponge damage / draw fire away from the Runelords if you have no other units available to do this. ''Griffon - Advanced Flier'' The Griffon is a pretty straight forward unit, possessing above average stats and no special abilities. Being able to fly and attack both air and grounded units allows them to reliably help out the rest of the army regardless of where they're fighting or what they're up against. But it's their speed that's to take note of, as the Dwarves do not have any unit even remotely close to its speed, other than the other flyers. This allows the Griffons to perform certain tasks that no other unit in the race could (except the Dragons), such as ambushes, hit and run strikes, consolidation and map control. However, their cost is the truly limiting factor here, for it clashes horrible with the rest of the race, especially in tier 4 where Runelords become present. Because of this, the Griffons simply don't get the attention they deserve. ----------''Tier 5''---------- ''Dwarf Lord - Dwarven General'' The dwarven general is quite expensive and almost impossible to mass, as he can only be produced at a level 5 keep and has a long production time on top of that. To make up for it, they're remarkably strong and have impressive resilience, both of which only improve when armorer/weaponsmith/mithril/dwarven brew upgrades are added to the mix. They're also resistant to elemental damage, which combined with their damage to buildings turns them into the bane of many towers, and makes them exceptionally good at assaulting bases. Hiding a few of these among your troops can prove an unpleasant surprise for the enemy. ''Storm Dragon - Elite Flier'' As Dwarves are quite resilient to magic via a multitude of factors, their Storm Dragons can be used to help Siege Weapon convoys cross the map, as well as generally adding a new attack type to the army and replacing Griffons to some extent in regards to certain speed related strategies. However, their high gold cost can prove quite challenging to the Dwarves and they'll need to make heavy use of their Trading Post if they insist on getting a Dragon on the field. ''Fire Dragon - Elite Flier'' Fire Dragons excel at tearing down buildings, but so do the Dwarven race as a whole. This means the Fire Dragon can't stand out from the race as a dedicated building demolisher, but instead used as addition base siege support. To make the most of the Fire Dragons from the Dwarven race, one should capitalise on their ability to fly and strike an enemy's base from positions that are difficult to defend (usually the back or by impassible terrain) and at the same time your Siege Weapons roll up at the front of their base, drawing attention away from the Dragon's attack. ''King Khalid - Dwarven Titan'' King Khalid would be seen as a typical ranged Titan, possessing an average range and expected stats. However, there are a couple of things which makes this untrue and makes King Khalid unique. Firstly, he doesn't count as being a missile unit. This means he can still fight at his full combat stat when engaged in melee, as well as being unaffected by the Orcs' "Cowards" powerup. Further more, this allows his ranged attack to be upgraded by the Weaponsmith and Mithril upgrades, allowing him to reach a ranged damage amount of 105! Secondly, like with all other units in the game with the Dwarf or Minotaur racial tag, he can take advantage of the Dwarven Brew powerup, allowing him to temporarily increase his combat and speed stat for a small fee of gold. Although these traits make him slightly different to other ranged Titans, they're not actually note worthy or practical enough to be of much use to him. With only an average range of 8 and a horrifying weakness to piercing attacks, King Khalid will find himself under common archer projectiles all too often, that'll also quickly chip away at his HP. These drawbacks mean that King Khalid must have a decent retinue of study body guards around him at all times. Fortunately for him, although the Dwarves are short folks, they aren't short on options for defensive formations. Between Dwarf Lords, Bezerkers and Runners, King Khalid can find the appropriate guards for the situation, allowing him to focus his mighty ranged attack towards a target worthy of his attention! But it must be noted that, although he has such high combat that misses from his attacks are rare, they have no scatter which results in a missed attack being an actual miss - I.E: a wasted attack.